Man, the world's largest listed hedge fund, lead the way, jumping more than 14%, as the FTSE 100 finished the week on a positive note despite the continuing eurozone crisis.

The company's shares have been under pressure recently on worries about its future growth and the performance of its key AHL fund and 2010's underwhelming acquisition, GLG. They were lifted earlier in the week as UBS said Man could be vulnerable to a takeover at a 50% premium to its current price, perhaps by a north American asset manager.

Analysts at Societe Generale yesterday played down talk of a bid, but even so raised their recommendation on the company's shares from hold to buy following its recent 35% decline. SocGen's Michael Sanderson said:

In our view the positive momentum was too great following its results in March, and we now believe negative momentum is too great given the proven fundamentals of the business. Despite the market backdrop for hedge fund sales being challenging and the risks at Man being finely balanced, we see upside being driven by the likely improvement in either the industry backdrop or the performance of AHL (or both).

On the prospect of a bid, Sanderson said there was a low probability of this happening:

Given many of the benefits that an acquirer could extract with Man are achievable by the business itself in the next twelve months, there would appear little merit for bidders or shareholders to consider a bid unless it was at a significant premium to the current price. Man's stock traded 50% higher within the last six weeks and since then there has been little change at the business other than a negative period at AHL and some overall market weakness. As such, while a bid cannot be ruled out, we consider any acquisition price would have to be significantly in excess of that level given the speed that Man's stock could recover if any evidence of better industry demand or AHL performance emerges in the near term.

There were also reports that unhappy shareholders had given chief executive Peter Clarke around nine months to turn the company around. Man, which issues a first quarter trading update next week, rose 13.25p to 107p. This marks its first positive week in six weeks.

Overall, investors shrugged off poor unemployment figures from Spain and a downgrade of the country's credit rating, as well as disappointing US GDP figures, and the FTSE 100 closed 28.39 points higher at 5777.11. Over the week the index was barely changed, up just five points. But that disguises a 103 point fall on Monday following news that Francois Hollande had won the first round of the French election and the Dutch government had collapsed over disagreements about its proposed austerity budget. In the UK, new figures revealed the country had fallen back into recession.

By the end of the week some of the eurozone fears had eased, however, and a number of positive corporate updates from the likes of Amazon, Apple, Ford and Sanofi also helped the market regain ground. Angus Campbell, head of market analysis at Capital Spreads, said:

After a terrible start to the week, where it looked like we could be in for a more prolonged move to the downside following dire manufacturing data from across the globe and the prospects of a new anti-European president of France, slowly but surely we've clawed back those losses to almost end the week in positive territory. All this with a worsening macro economic backdrop where the UK retrenched back into an official recession, the world's biggest economy slowed and Spanish unemployment hit a record high.
The lack of a bigger and broader sell off is a testament to the strength of the stock markets which in the past few weeks have suffered sharp moves to the downside, but have always been quick to regain the lost ground.

Barclays was among the risers, up 10.1p to 223.1p despite a shareholder revolt over pay. Royal Bank of Scotland rose 0.77p to 24.35p but Lloyds Banking Group lost 0.285p to 31.19p following further problems with its proposed branch sales.

Pearson, the publishing group behind Penguin books and the Financial Times, said its first year profits will be lower than the same time last year, but investors were unruffled by the comments.

In a statement to co-incide with its annual meeting, the company blamed the shortfall on the fact its operating profits are heavily weighted to the second half, as well as investment and restructuring costs, and the sale of its stake in information group FTSE International.

Overall it said trading was in line with expectations, and its strong position in US educational services has helped it overcome a weak market. Pearson put on 17p to £11.67.

BG rose 13.5p to £14.44 after the gases group sold its 40% stake in a liquified natural gas terminal in Quintero, Chile, for $352m to Spain's Enagas.

AstraZeneca added 14p to 2680.5p as it recovered from Thursday's announcement of the departure of chief executive David Brennan and a cut in its full year earnings forecast. Analysts at Credit Suisse repeated their underperform rating and said:

Further cost cutting combined with a clear message of no major acquisition means the near-term dividend looks secure. However, sustainable earnings growth is entirely dependent on the success of the pipeline. Following a string of late stage failures we remain sceptical on the ability of AstraZeneca's R&D engine to deliver. Until we see evidence of an improvement in R&D productivity, a reduction in AstraZeneca's discount to peers is unjustified in our view. Furthermore, we remain cautious on the prospects for Brilinta and Emerging Markets and we now see little room for positive earnings surprises driven by lower costs.

GlaxoSmithKline, which also released disappointing first quarter results during the week, moved 3.5p higher to 1423.5p after it received European approval for its nimenrix immunisation treatment against meningococcal disease.

CRH, the Irish building materials group, climbed 48p to £12.68 following an upgrade from JP Morgan Cazenove, which moved from underweight to overweight. The bank said:

Our previous concerns that the rating had become too high and that a dip in the macro data could leave the shares looking exposed proved well founded. Now, we feel we are that much closer to the beginning of the upgrade cycle. Despite the mixed US macro data, we are still in growth mode that, if it is sustained, will drive upgrades in the products and distribution businesses.

But Whitbread fell 14p to £19.07 on profit taking after Thursday's well received update from the hotels, pub restaurants and Costa Coffee group. Credit Suisse issued a neutral recommendation on the business, partly to reflect the uncertainty in the UK economy. The bank said the company's pub business was increasingly in focus:

Whitbread is facing more questions about the future of its pub business than ever before, in our view. Our analysis of joint site profitability suggests declining returns driven by absolute profit declines and higher capital intensity. A near term exit looks unlikely but with like for likes having averaged just 1.3% over the last 8 years and the market highly competitive we expect the issue to remain high on the agenda.

Morrisons was 1.9p lower at 283.2p after it announced another boardroom change following news that marketing director Richard Lancaster was stepping down. The supermarket group said human resources and communications director Norman Pickavance would leave at the end of June. Earlier this week the latest Kantar data showed Morrison losing market share in the 12 weeks to April, down from 12.1% a year ago to 11.9%.

Among the mid-caps, Salamander Energy, the Asia-focused oil and gas group, slid 0.8p to 255.3p following news of a £124m cash call at 130p a share. It plans to issued 13 new shares for every 20 held. The company said it was raising the funds to improve facilities at its Bualuang oil field in Thailand and to pay for further drilling in Thailand and in the north Kutei basin in Indonesia. Analyst Keith Morris at Investec said:

We like the Salamander story, but cut to a hold recommendation [from buy] and revise our target price to 250p from 296p. We are prepared to be more positive when exploration drilling gets under way in the Gulf of Thailand and especially the north Kutei basin.

Kesa Electricals, which recently sold Comet to concentrate on its European stores, fell 2.8p to 53.75p. It was tipped as a buy by UBS earlier in the week which said the company could boost earnings by closing its loss-making Italian business. Its Spanish business is also struggling, and is forecast to move into the red to the tune of €10m next year. Today's poor economic news from Spain did not help sentiment towards the company.

But chip designer CSR climbed 22.2p to 232.8p. On Thursday the company was the subject of a spate of renewed takeover talk, with Texas Instruments and private equity both mentioned as possible predators.

Finally Nighthawk Energy jumped nearly 15% to 3.64p after the US-focused shale oil producer said early results from its 75%-owned Jolly Ranch project in Colorado suggested a wider range of potentially oil producing zones than expected, at lower development costs and risks.